She is either taking a subversive jab at the mayor of New York or is extremely passionate about the recovery efforts following Hurricane Sandy.

Either way, Lydia Callis is now the world's most talked-about sign language interpreter.

Callis has captured countless hearts and minds with her animated translations of press conferences on hurricane Sandy and its fallout, rolling her eyes and puffing out her cheeks as she stands next to the stone-faced Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

She sends the message with her hands. But she tells the story with her face.

From my experience, deaf people are very, very good at lip reading and hence the reason you see coaches on sidelines with the card in front of their face and catchers and pitchers covering their faces when they talk. I suppose in a large room it may be helpful, but there is no need for the person to be standing right next to the speaker.

Lending attitude and expression to signing is part of the language. Some speakers and some signers are more expressive than others but it’s not upstaging anyone. Closed captioning is not the same as being spoken to in your language nor is it the same for signing.

19
posted on 10/30/2012 10:32:00 AM PDT
by count-your-change
(You don't have to be brilliant, not being stupid is enough.)

It is funny to watch the sign language interpreter try to keep up, especially if the speaker is using lots of words outside of the ASL vocabulary. I saw the Capitol Steps once and they were using a local sign language interpreter who wasn't familiar with their performance, especially the "Lirty Dies" routine where a lot of the humor is switching letters is words so the signer has to spell them out. Part way through the performer stopped, looked at the signer and said something like "I think her fingers just fell off". The crowd laughed and she then had to sign that joke too.

26
posted on 10/30/2012 10:40:21 AM PDT
by KarlInOhio
(Big Bird is a brood parasite: laid in our nest 43 years ago and we are still feeding him.)

The legal recognition of sign languages is one of the major concerns of the international Deaf community. There is no standard way in which such a recognition can be formally or legally extended; every country has its own interpretation. In some countries, the national sign language is an official state language, whereas in others it has a protected status in certain areas such as education. However, symbolic recognition is no guarantee for an effective improvement of the life of sign language users. Sarah Batterbury has argued that sign languages should be recognized and supported not merely as an accommodation for the disabled, but as the communication medium of language communities

Whenever Doomberg tries to be soooo PC and murder the Spanish language, I just go “La-la-la-la-la” loud enough to drown him out until the danger is over. It’s the English stuff he blathers that is the true danger, however. He really thinks he has some sort of corner on the brains market. He actually (I am NOT kidding) initially expected NYC employees, if they could not get to their regular job place, to go somewhere else to “see if they could help.” Yeah, I was gonna be the first in line to kiss Doomberg butt and endanger my life getting to a place to do scutwork which could wait for safer conditions. We didn’t hear about this nonsense again once the imbecile finally absorbed the true danger of the storm.

Glad I’m not the only one to notice this - I sorta felt bad last night watching this bcuz I was in tears laughing so hard.. my wife walked in wondering what was so funny and I said it looks like she’s making fun of him!

The number of hearing impaired people is small in any population and I can’t imagine anyone with a hearing problem not making use of the closed captioning systems that are available on just about any TV set sold in the last 10 years. The need for sign language interpreters in these situations is over blown. Here in the Midwest tornado and severe weather warnings are always broadcast with captioning and not sign language interpreters.

Disclaimer:
Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual
posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its
management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the
exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.